This one is LONG overdue and I LOVED my flail playthrough. Back into the “swing” of things: We see what you did there!!! Also, unless the LATEST PATCH changed this, Flails CANNOT BE COUNTERED. Also, the Ash of War spinning attack is LETHAL on horseback. Literally just crank it and watch tough enemies and bosses get shredded!!! I used Family Heads with my Death Magic Only walkthrough and it shredded the game. My other walkthrough was a strength-based, chain-link dual wield, jump attack walkthrough. Easiest walkthrough I did and the most fun.
Yes! Another player with the clutch info here. The horseback attack is amazing and has a brutally good hitbox on top of everything you've mentioned already. Great point with the anti-parry info too!
Let us just say theres a reason why flails are op is the 17th in the series. I friggin love me my flails in RPGs but any time theres weapon physics involved, I end up giving them a pass. I apprechiate the commitment to the series. It would be a bummer to not see it completed after all the time and effort put into it.
Made my first run in Elden Ring using the flail since i found the 1st one early in the game. And these weapons are OP specialy on horseback with the heavy atack causing almost instant bleeding. Jump atacks stagger enemies quite easily.
Yep, noticeably absent from the video is the amazing horseback capabilities of the flail and I went straight to the comments section to see if it was mentioned, thank you! Spinning an ice infused flail with it's native bleed quickly applies both statuses for example letting you now lean into the debuff for extra damage and doing a decent chunk to anything. Also agreed that jumping heavy attacks are good for stagger and are slightly more economical stamina wise than average.
The nightrider is the only one i liked due to its witch-king of angmar look, and the range really put these weapons back when comparing with swords, lances and axes... still the option to have then in the game is cool.
My last playthrough used flails pretty often against tough skinned or brittle enemies like imps and skeletons. Learned there that the jumping R2 is a pretty good way to get that poise damage done with these floppy weapons without the downside of the long windup like the charged R2
It is possible to beat astel before any other remembrance boss. Jump into rennna’s rise from the treetops, make your way through the lake of rot, and then kill Astel ez
I find the flails work best on horseback as the relatively short reach is offset by torrents move speed. Also, the spinning heavy on horseback does not use FP and movement speed is not slowed down, unlike the spin attack ash of war. When I fought the first ball bearing hunter I was able to hit him with 12 spins as he spawned which bled him and staggered him for a critical hit before he even attacked, so there is some utility to that ash of war early on.
Finally. Now you can tell everyone that great hammers are there best weapons in Elden Ring, since they weigh half as much as colossal weapons while doing nearly as much stance damage and if you take Great Stars you have bleed and self heal included.
I was so close to quitting this game until I found the flails, they're my favorite weapon in history and I was so happy to see fromsoft recognized their strength against shields and counters that most people forget about
Great to see these precious guides back again. Elden Ring doesn't get old, specially with the DLC under our radars. Much appreciated for the general information, and I think regular Hammers and Greathammers are left to do. Welcome back to ER, Fextra, amazing channel.
@@Dragongaming-ws7bm Well played, Dragon. Daggers, and just remembered, regular Axes as well. That makes four missing total. Will catalysts count too? 😂
although the options are limited and there are cons too it, i do rather like flails in general, and these ones look cool, even the basic one. I think ima do a knight play through with a basic flail until i get that late game one, will see.
I admit, my appreciation for flails is likely in spite of their effectiveness, but it's appreciation nonetheless. I just like that they're effectively DEX-focused hammers, giving the Strike damage and poise break without the fist weapons' short range or the whips' lack of crits. They're also honestly my favorite horseback weapons, with the easier-to-read hitbox and innate bleed. Besides, you don't see them too often in games, so the novelty is fun, too. I kinda wish there was a two-handed flail available...
The series continues! Once all weapons are declared OP the first seal will be broken. Oh, Shadow of the Erdtree, we conjureth thee! All the weapons are OP!
Would love to see one of these showcasing the stance breaking capabilities of Greathammers and axes. These vids are very helpful. Love your ER content🎉
One thing to say about spinning chain: it is insane at building up status, and all of the non unique flails have native bleed buildup, so even when infused with something else, it still procs really fast. And you can roll out of the animation any time. Don't sleep on spinning chain guys :) The poise damage on flails is also really good, basically the same as hammers. In general, flails are very much like hammers, just with natural bleed, but a worse charged heavy attack.
As I can see, flails are strike damage option for dex builds which they are usually lack of. Strike damage have always been the best physical damage type in souls games. So I used a Nightrider Flail with Wild strikes for my pure dex build and it was pretty good.
Eyy, what an pleasant surprise! Thanks for getting back to these, they’re genuinely super informative. I’d personally love if you covered fist/claw weapons, there’s not a ton of them, but they’re some of my personal favorites.
Looking forward to Fextra Elden Ring content wave 2 when this DLC finally drops. 2022 was an awesome year, I spent most of it playing ER because Fextra inspired me to play again and again. Hopefully 2024 is the same :)
In my first playthrough I committed early to Dex as a primary attacking stat, so the easy-to-access flails were cherished weapons. Their innate blood loss buildup and strike damage type makes them excellent secondary weapons to have around. And swinging two of them around may not be optimal, but it's definitely cool.
Been using the Night Calvary flail as a third and it absolutely wears enemies out. Especially enemies that have high poise and enemies that have hardening type defenses like the Crystallian bosses.
flails are a good weapon for someone who mains a Katana dex build to choose when a boss has high slash defense but is vulnerable to strike damage. It's nice to see it clearly explained how terrible the default skill is 🥲
1st playthrough on Elden Ring. Longtime Souls vet from the early days of Demons Souls. Running Faith/Dex Confessor with a Flail as my PRIMARY WEAPON. I was historically a mace user, so getting a big ball on a chain was the logical progression of my standard loadout. Sacred Blade AOW is like a nuke and the jumping R2's followed by standing R2 has you able to regularly auto duck a counter attack while potentially breaking poise. Keeping a kukri on backup is a surprising utility to force a bleed after an r1 flail flurry. Overall having a ton of fun and doing better in PVP than I expected with a weapon I heard "sucked"
YOU CAN SWING IT AROUND its insane how much control you can get and you can whip around like wow. i couldnt believe the crap i was doing. dex+faith is actually amazing and you can switch between a dex blade if you need to. the nightrider with a good AOW is my fave. i played my first run with it and i can't wait to do it again
I'm dual wielding these bad boys and I have to agree, the normal L1 moveset spam is dogshit. However, if you start your combo with Jump L1 or Crouch L1, it becomes a whole lot better. I usually roll away on or before the third L1. The hold R2 of this weapon on horseback is the best. It's so good it lets me kill stuff that I'm not supposed to kill yet. Flails are an acquired taste.
Y’all sleep on flails way too much. Spinning weapon is ridiculously fucking OP. I don’t know where y’all got that from. It’s like players just spun it a couple of times and said, nah this is bad. When I’ve literally shredded every almost every boss in my the game with that ash of war: especially NPCs. They just seem to escape it. If they can be bled 🩸 it makes for some insane dps and the poise damage … my god the poise damage. Wracks ip so fast. I think the creators wanted us to sleep on this weapon.
enjoyed the input. I will also add their jump attack. I'm duel wielding Nightrider and basic flail. Compared to two handed jump attacks, not that impressive, but they are just trucking low end mobs, especially if they are grouped in tight. And I have had way better horseback fights. My only complaint is not being able to pair them with morning stars. Different attack sets I guess. This did help me though kinda pick between cold and other builds.
I enjoy these videos but its a little baffling that this far into the game's life (and Fromsoft's for that matter) we're still presenting raw AR without considering how split damage types affects these weapons in practice. Every single infusable weapon in this entire series, you either say Fire/Lightning or Flame/Sacred is the "top" infusion and thats very *very* often inaccurate. In the majority of cases, the infusions with pure physical damage will do the most actual damage. The elemental infusions are more for specialized builds (Flame Art on a Faith build loaded with Fire buffs, for example) or for specific boss weaknesses. You also almost never talk about Blood/Poison/Occult either, which is odd. I assume its because they almost always have a lower number, but as I've been saying, just going off of AR is misleading. There are a LOT of cases where adding bleed or poison is going to be significantly more effective than splitting off some elemental damage. And just to clarify, Im not trying to shit on these videos, I respect how much time and effort is probably involved, its just my two cents
You forgot to mention one serious issue with the default flail: its hitbox for guard counters is offset to the right, which can make it miss about 60% of the time due to how small the actual weapon head is.
What is the probldm with staggered dual wield movesets? It changes nothing. Like, instead of having 2 hits right at the end of the attacks, you get one halfway throigh and one at the end. When it comes to status buildup, you get the same amount of buildup in the same amount of time, yes with a non-staggered moveset you get a burst at the end of attack, but it doesn't change that it's 2 hits per attack.
Something I noticed with the fail that I haven't noticed with any other weapon, the R1 chain attack is fluid. It's a weapon that you can just keep attacking until you run out of stamina without much of a delay from the end of the R1 chain to starting a new one.
